A Nike ad from the 1970s is absolutely wild

Is the modern office really an office without inspirational quotes scrawled across the walls, on the stairs and in meeting rooms? These days, those quotes are an integral part of office life, although it’s hard to know if anyone feels inspired by those maxims. We promise the ones in your office won’t stick in your mind as much as an old Nike internal memo, though – or as much as the famous Nike logo.

The memo appears to have been circulated by Nike marketing director Rob Strasser in 1977 and includes ‘live on the ground’, ‘It won’t be pretty’ and ‘If we do the right things we’ll make damn near automatic money’. , which has varying degrees of odd. Let’s unpack them a little more. First of all, we don’t quite get what ‘living on the land’ means. Did Nike want its employees to forage for food? Or is it a comment on using sustainable materials (we doubt not)?

‘It won’t be enough’ makes us think there were more horrors in the workplace than in the office. And ‘If we do the right things we’ll make damn near automatic money’ is probably an exciting ending to the manifesto. Putting results before profit is a beautiful sentiment we think, but let’s be honest, it’s not really true in many cases. Doing the right thing and capitalism or mass production, do not always go together, for one thing. If you’re planning to start a business anytime soon, we wouldn’t recommend sticking that one on your wall.

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I personally would love to know how employees received the memo at the time. Did they really feel motivated by ‘push yourself, push others’ and ‘your job isn’t done until? the job done,’ or were they cynical about the whole thing?